Soulmates (are no excuse)
by norickayer
Summary: The human race didn't always have soulmate marks. It might seem like they have, growing up in the 21st century with the soulmate-themed reality TV shows and clichéd plot twists on soup operas, but soul-mate marks have a shorter history than the fax machine. (A Young Avengers Soulmate AU; ensemble cast)


_**Characters**__: America, Billy, Cassie, Clint Barton, David, Eli, Jonas/Vision, Kate, Nate, Noh-Varr, Teddy, Tommy  
><em>_**Pairings**__: Teddy Altman/Billy Kaplan, Clint Barton & Kate Bishop, David Alleyne & Tommy Shepherd, Eli Bradley/Ambiguous character, Noh-Varr/Ambiguous character, Kate Bishop & Cassie Lang, Cassie Lang/Nate Richards, Jonas (Young Avengers)/Cassie Lang, Teddy Altman/Billy Kaplan/Loki, Loki & Thor  
><em>_**Note**__: Any pairings can be construed as platonic or romantic/sexual. The distinction between the slashes and ampersands in the above list is a suggestion; I'm not picky._

"Wait, you guys seriously believe in soulmates?"

Teddy shrugs. "It's just the easiest thing to call them, we could just as easily say, um, shit, what was the technical term?" He looks to Billy, because it is Billy's job to know what he is talking about. Obviously. That is what soulmates are for.

"_Significant others with potential for emotional resonance_," Billy quotes.

"Yeah, that," Teddy agrees.

America just raises a perfectly-shaped eyebrow.

"You seriously don't?" Billy asks her.

America looks around and shrugs. "I've been through dozens of worlds, and who-ends-up-with-who is the least of the differences I've seen. Why would I believe in soulmates?"

Teddy shakes his head, "Uh, maybe because everyone spontaneously develops tattoos of the first words their soulmate says to them after the moment of thaumaturgical compatibility?" For emphasis, he turns his head and pulls back his ear, revealing the words '_Yeah, thanks to you_' written along the curve of his skull.

America is speechless, staring at the words in confusion.

"Are you shitting me?"

The day Clint realizes that Kate is his soulmate can best be described as 'lazy'.

_She's_ lounging on his couch, idly scratching Lucky's fur and feeding him the leftover crust from her pizza.

_He's_ carefully bandaging a cut on his forearm when his eyes land on his soul-mark. He studies the familiar words, some barely-intelligible thought tugging at his attention. The black letters stare back at him, as familiar as always.

He looks at Kate.

"Huh."

Kate looks up at him over purple-tinted sunglasses. She's wearing them even though she's inside- she's _just that cool_.

"You're-" Clint can't quite make his lips form words, so he holds up his arm instead.

Kate looks at him calmly.

"Yeah. We're soulmates. So what?"

He gapes at her. Makes a few aborted gestures with his hands, including three and a half ASL signs.

"I dunno what you're babbling about. This is old news. I thought that was why you let me keep the name."

It's probably for the best that he didn't realize sooner. He'd have gotten nervous and fucked something up.

Tommy refuses to show anyone his soul-mark. It must be listed in his juvie paperwork, and any member of the team could probably find out if they really wanted to, but they all silently agree to let him have his privacy.

Eli glimpses a dark smudge below his hipbone when Tommy's tank top shifts too much in the gym.

Teddy only just makes out the word '_yeah,'_ when Tommy's towel slips after a shower at the Kaplan house.

It's not like soulmates are an always-and-forever thing. Even once your soul-mark appears, it isn't necessarily forever. It doesn't happen often, but they can change, disappear. Billy's mother (Wanda, not Rebecca) said it happened when someone made a decision that changed the course of their life forever, shifting the strands of fate with them. Billy's mom (Rebecca, not Wanda) said it could also be a reaction to trauma.

You aren't born with a soul-mark, either. When Billy was a kid he was glad of this, because he was terrified that his soul-mark would reveal to everyone that he liked boys _("Billy, you know almost 40% of soul-bonds are platonic, I've told you that a million times! Now eat your dinner," Mrs. Kaplan would say_). Now, he thinks that would have saved him a lot of time; surely if they were like birthmarks, someone would have noticed that Wiccan and Speed shared the soul-marks of William and Thomas Maximoff?

When Billy is twelve, the words '_No, thanks to you_' bleed onto the skin of his hip. It takes four days for the words to completely fill in. To Billy, who had been daydreaming about Hollywood one-liners and confessions of love, it's a let-down, a reminder that he really is nothing special.

Eli's soul-mark comes early, when he's just nine years old. His younger siblings don't really get why the adults are making such a fuss, but there's cake and games, so they don't worry too much. Jordan wishes Eli a happy birthday, but she's only four, so Eli just hugs her back and doesn't correct her.

His mark is a light brown, standing out against his skin like a birthmark on the top of his foot.

'_Are you a superhero?_' is all it says. Eli spends the next decade trying to make sure the answer is 'yes.'

Maybe it would be easier for the world if soul-marks were more easily interpreted. If they were simple, like names, or if they counted down the time until you met your soulmate.

Kate Bishop disagrees. Soul-marks are vague and uncertain, true. Most people never know who their soul-mate will be until the words on their bodies are spoken, and despite what movies will tell you, it's hardly ever connection-at-first-sight. The marks hardly ever make sense until you've already met and grown close.

They aren't a prediction or prophesy, but a reassurance.

"There's someone out there who will care. You just have to find them," Cassie tells her one night, draped across the couch of the Young Avengers hideout.

Kate doesn't tell her that she's pretty sure her first soul-mark, a cursive scribble spelling out "I thought you left" is something Cassie's already said- Cassie is only fourteen and doesn't even have her own soul-mark yet. Kate doesn't want to put that pressure on her, and even more doesn't want to risk being _wrong_.

The phenomenon of soul-mates has been around for decades, but not so long that there aren't still periodic surprises.

Like aliens developing soul-marks upon prolonged exposure to Earth's atmosphere.

"This is normal for humans?" Noh-Varr clarifies.

"Ever since the 40's, yeah," David says, frowning at he looks at the words scrawled across Noh-Varr's back.

"Do you want to know what it says?" David asks, after a long pause.

"…not yet."

"_Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck_," Loki chants, huddled in a corner, wedged between the wall and the entertainment system in her apartment.

She'd avoided looking too closely at her body-the body she'd stolen from her child self- during those first few months, but she'd hoped feared wondered. Would the soul-marks remain, now that the body's occupant has changed? Would Leah's offhand remark still marr the surface of her skin?

After her run-in with the so-called Future Loki, she has to know.

Loki carefully peels off her armor, setting it down onto the couch. Next comes the shirt, dropped in a heap on the floor.

Leah's soul-mark is gone from her clavicle. Whomever she is now, she's not Leah's soulmate.

An idea alights in her mind. The child-Loki's soul-mark is gone. But what about the old-Loki's soul-mark?

It takes some maneuvering, but Loki manages to catch a glimpse of her back in the bathroom mirror. There they are, Norse runes carefully tracing a path down her spine, as they once adorned another body. They aren't Thor's first words to her, but a boastful comment said several decades later.

There it is: the mark that started the story of Loki. The odd Asgardian writing that inspired Loki's plan to be fostered by Odin himself, so that one day Loki might meet the person who would declare themself, in Asgardian tongue, to be Loki's family.

It's not that Loki wants to deny Thor, or to sever their connection. But why couldn't she have a new mark for Thor, as the child had? Why this old mark, returned from the grave to haunt her and remind her of what she is?

Thor's mark is still there. And then there's the two new marks adorning Loki's shins: '_I could have saved everything'_ and '_That was horrible. Oh god, thank you_.'

She recognizes the words, of course, although she has never allowed herself to read them before. She heard them only weeks ago. It isn't a day she's likely to forget.

What this means for Loki is unclear: If she's the same Loki as before, these marks should have appeared on her body decades, centuries ago. It matters not when the partner is born, or when the point of compatibility will be reached. Thor's mark still remained after all that time, after all, tying them together long before and long after they could be called 'close'.

How can she be a new Loki with new soul-mates while still retaining a soul-mark from another incarnation of herself?

Why should Leah's words be gone, but Thor's mark remains the same one Loki has had for decades? Why does Thor's mark assume she is the same Loki she's ever been, but Billy and Teddy's marks assume she is a new person?

How? _Why_?

And which Loki is she, really?

"Billy! Teddy!" the younger Kaplan boys shriek as they stampede into Billy's room. The two former superheroes look up, and Teddy has to force himself to not flinch and drop Billy's hand.

"What do you want, brats?" Billy asks, his voice the particular combination of fondness and exasperation common to all older siblings.

"We saw Tommy's soul-mark!" Adam boasts. Joey elbows him in the ribs.

"I saw it," Joey corrects. "It's-"

Tommy blurs into the room and covers Joey's mouth.

"You little _shits_-" he hisses.

"Tommy!" Billy yells, grabbing his younger brother from out of his twin's grasp.

"They're just kids, they didn't mean-" Teddy tries to say.

Tommy's moved out by the end of the week.

People can have multiple soul-marks, of course, but the more visible ones are always given undue focus.

The words on Thor's chest prove his love for Jane Foster, but his back will always belong to Loki.

When Teddy is thirteen, most of his eighth-grade classmates have developed their soul-marks. For six months, he and Sarah Goldman are a united force against the sea of '_you look great', 'takes one to know one', 'who are you?', 'get out of the way', 'lol nerd', 'Excuse me', 'Initiative scum', and 'That'd be great'_. Then one day during lunch, Sarah leans over and shows Teddy the words beginning to fade onto her forearm, and Teddy is alone for real.

He discovers his shapeshifting that night, trying to force a soul-mark to manifest.

"_We're disgusting_" is the first one that appears, born out of desperation. He doesn't choose those first words, and he refuses to consider what that says about him. He wipes his shoulder clean before he goes to bed.

One day, after he begins to use his shapeshifting on purpose, he finds a real soul-mark hiding behind his left ear.

So he can't really be a Skrull like Greg says, right?

No one ever sees Nate's soul-mark, but after the way he reacts to her death, they all quietly assume his soulmate must have been Cassie.

David probably knows more about soulmates than anyone else on the planet. He knows all of the metaphysical and magical implications of soul-marks, via Steven Strange. He knows all of the psychological studies and personality profiles, via Jessica Drew, and he knows the statistics and genetic theories, via Charles Xavier.

He knows that any given person may develop multiple soul-marks over their lifetime, that the connection doesn't need to be romantic or sexual, and that soulmates have certain magical properties but are not otherwise guaranteed to have better or healthier relationships than any other couples.

He's still incredibly pissed off when he meets Tommy Shepherd and realizes just what the phrase '_My move_' refers to. He's even more pissed when a cosmic horror from beyond their dimension kidnaps or eats or kills Tommy before he has a chance to respond.

Maybe that's why, when Tommy disappears, David personally tracks down Tommy's old team instead of just notifying the Avengers. Maybe that's why he stakes out their social media and hacks their phone records. Maybe that's the only reason David tracks them down to a diner and demands they help him save his coworker-turned-friend.

_Maybe_ that's the only reason David cares, but he hopes not.

Tommy loves his brother, but he's glad they aren't soulmates.

It happens to siblings sometimes- and to twins even more often. Hell, their mother and uncle might be the most famous example of platonic soulmates. Still, Tommy's glad some things are different for them; he's glad to have this one piece of evidence that he and Billy aren't just The Maximoff Twins: Take 2 (Now with 50% more gay!).

Tommy likes Billy. He wants to get to know his brother and fight beside him.

He's just glad he has a choice.

The human race didn't always have soulmate marks. It might seem like they have, growing up in the 21st century with the soulmate-themed reality TV shows and clichéd plot twists on soup operas, but soul-mate marks have a shorter history than the fax machine.

To Loki, it stinks of magic so powerful and ubiquitous that it's seeped into the very dirt. It was once a spell cast on humans, but Loki sees now why aliens and mutants and Aesir alike manifest soul-marks upon prolonged contact with Earth. The planet is claiming them.

Loki has only seen one spell so pervasive in zir life before or since: The spell of "No More Mutants"

Ze rubs at the red mark slowly turning into script on zir leg and trades glances with America.

Loki wonders if Billy has any inkling of the spell he will one day weave.

+1

Jonas isn't sure if robots can have soulmates. He isn't sure how the magic works or if he has a soul separate from the old Vision. He sees Cassie staring at her right leg sometimes, and although he's never seen it, he knows that's where her soulmark is.

He wonders what it says, whether it told her she's destined for Iron Lad.

In his darker days, he wonders if he's close enough. In his brighter days, he adds a scribbled name to his left arm and decides that if the Earth isn't going to assign him a soulmate, he'll just have to decide for himself.


End file.
